This Female Director is Sick of Reading Scripts About "Young, Sexy Women"

In this poignant and honest essay, director Isabel Coixet ('Learning to Drive' and 'Paris, I Love You') reveals the extreme misrepresentation of women in the scripts she receives.

By
Isabel Coixet

Jun 28, 2016

I sit at my computer in my neighborhood coffee shop. I've gotten into the habit of sitting at the back table of this place every time I have to read a new script. In the back there is usually no one: the bulk of the clientele consists of breastfeeding women, young actors from the acting school next door, and retirees reading the newspaper, all of whom invariably occupy the front tables and terrace. Here at the very back, it is quiet. I ask for a ristretto coffee and I take a sip. I open the PDF that has just arrived. Script. Feature film. Produced by an independent studio. $10 million budget. I'm familiar with some of the writer's work. A man and a woman who have written a few interesting movies. I have reasonable expectations for the project. I promised my agent that I would read it today.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

And there it is, on the first page. In the first sequence. The first line. The word, "groan." Groan. But there is more, much more on this first page: "tense neck muscles bathed in sweat," "perfectly manicured nails digging into a man's back", "moan of pleasure", "beautiful mane of hair".

The word "beautiful" is repeated four times. The word "sexy" three. And that's only on the first page. On the second page, the beautiful woman's long, gorgeous mane of hair, slender waist, and perfect nails reach a "long orgasm," open the refrigerator and get a tub of ice cream. Usually Ben and Jerry's.

"The word 'beautiful' is repeated four times. The word 'sexy' three. And that's only on the first page."

I have to bite my tongue to keep from yelling. I do not want to traumatize the quietly suckling babies, nor wake the retirees. But in my head I'm howling like that guy in Fellini's Amarcord: Fellini who climbs a tree and shouts "Voglio una dona!"—or, "I want a woman!"

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Since I began making films, I estimate that I have received more than 150 scripts from producers from all over the world. From these, 110 of them are written with all the subtleties of an incompetent pupil of Barbara Cartland and have protagonists (rather, co-stars, since women rarely are the driving force of the plot) that are young, thin, and beautiful women with immaculate nails, groaning with tense neck muscles and bathed in sweat, eating ice cream 20 seconds after having sex.

I swear it's not an exaggeration: that is the prototype of women that prevails in American, European, and Asian cinema. All that changes is the brand of ice cream. Another thing the scripts have in common are the number of words uttered by women: as a general rule, they are given only a quarter of the dialogues (and not exactly the most relevant). Even in animated films whose protagonists are female, it's a stretch for them to talk as much as the male characters. Look at Mulan, Pocahontas and even Frozen.

The other 40 remaining scripts, which are also characterized by a deafening subtlety, are stories simply created without a single female character. Unless we count the women who have died and come back to life as ghosts or those in the protagonist hero's memory. Beautiful ghosts, of course.

In recent times there have been numerous tests that analyze how women are represented on the screen: the Bechdel test; the "sexy lamp test" ("if you can replace a woman character with a sexy lamp and it doesn't change the story, you need a new script"—which is precisely the scenario for 50 Shades of Grey...); and the Russo test. But we mustn't forget that what we see on the screen has been deliberately written so that those who finance the films can easily imagine the script becoming a film.

Contemporary cinematographic literature is the result of progressive infantilism of content and the narrowing of perspective. On one hand, the writers are educated in schools that reduce the writing process to a bunch of rules and parameters. They deliberately ignore the analysis and the study of film writers who made cinema an extraordinarily complex art and a sophisticated approach to reality. Students are instructed in formulaic writing methods. They are encouraged to use prototypes that will only generate more prototypes. They are pounded with tricks to enter into the industry. They are not encouraged to think about how to be better writers. In a postgraduate writing class at a prestigious film school (at which I recently taught), none of the 38 students had read a screenplay by Ernest Lubitsch, Paul Schrader, or Joseph Leo Mankievicz, who wrote and directed All About Eve, defying the studio executives who were against his choice of Bette Davis for Margo Chaning because she was "ancient and ugly". All of them had read the script for The Matrix. And of course, none of them read any books about screenwriting published more than 20 years ago.

On the other hand, those who have the power to decide which movies are made and which are not made are, by majority, men—men whose particular worldview does not include female characters older than 25, who wear less than a size 36 (and DD) bra and, if possible, have unlimited orgasmic ability, requiring just three seconds of penetration and a pair of ellipses.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

"Those who have the power to decide which movies are made...are, by majority, men."

In this sense, screenwriters compose directly for a handful of men, forgetting that a director has to suffer through reading and digesting what they have written. But above all, they forget that there is a world bursting with stories of women of all ages, all sizes, all variations of beauty: tall, fat, short, skinny, with short hair and hair to their toes, with and without an hourglass waist; women who are funny, adventurous, cross-eyed, bright, sleepy, alive, on the brink of death, fascinating or boring—every bit as much as male characters. Correction: much more complex, in the mere fact that they—we—have had to fight in a thousand different distinct ways for our place in the world. Women need voices to tell their stories in a fresh, new way, away from clichés and prototypes because with this new vision, and only from it, the world can become a warmer, more just place.

I know that within a few months, perhaps a year, the film whose script I have just read will be shot and released, without my help of course, in some theatre somewhere in the world. Followed by many more like it. But I also know that increasingly, there will be movies with women who do not moan, with unpainted nails, and who much prefer a good cheesecake to a tub of ice cream. My own characters, men and women (ok, mostly women, who I am trying to fool?) are not defined in beautiful or ugly terms. They walk unsteadily or with a purpose, they eat greedily or without hunger, they dress carefully or without paying attention. Nor, when describing a sexual act, do they resort to the word "groan".

A note to screenwriters of today: the only way to create stories that make us grow, think, feel and dream is to avoid the patriarchal iconography prototypes used to seduce producers. It's not an easy ride; you have to be prepared to face all kinds of comments. I will never forget what a very well-known, Oscar-winning producer told me when I presented him the script for My Life Without Me: "Why do you want to tell the story of a poor, badly dressed woman who has just months to live?". My answer was simple: "Well, someone has to"

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Harper's BAZAAR participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.